Rep. Riley Moore, R-W.Va., writing in an op-ed published by the Gazette-Mail on Tuesday under the headline "Big Beautiful Bill delivers for West Virginia," informed us: “West Virginians demanded generational change in November ... .†Thus, readers enjoyed the opportunity to observe a case study in the absence of self-awareness by a man who lives the carefree life of his family’s 50 years of generational office-holding.
Moore slathered praise on the bill saying it returns “sovereignty†to America by permitting President Donald Trump to rid the nation of illegal immigrants. Moore failed to explain how we are being robbed of sovereignty by the likes of fruit pickers, restaurant workers and day laborers who account for most of those being sent to internment gulags.
Moore gushed that Trump’s bill will return America to a “new Golden Age†by propelling “this economy to take off like a rocket ship.†(As an aside, I had the eerie feeling I’d heard that before.) He wrote in such emotion-laden adoration of Trump as to evoke images of him dramatically swooning onto his fainting couch.
One has visions of Moore’s cheeks damp with the tears of passionate elation over how Trump’s bill will fix former President “Joe Biden’s porous border policies.†Perhaps Moore thought it unnecessary to mention that, only last summer, congressional Republicans and Democrats, following months of toil, had produced a GOP-friendly border security bill. Maybe Moore had forgotten that Trump threatened lightning bolts would be hurled at any Republican who voted in favor of tightening the border -- because then-candidate Trump wanted to yammer about a border “crisis†during the campaign.
Moore took the obligatory shot at Planned Parenthood, announcing that the Big Beautiful Bill would defund it. Then, possibly because his capacity for hyperbole needed to be taken out for an airing, he termed Planned Parenthood an “evil industry.†He made no mention that, decades ago, the Hyde Amendment had barred Planned Parenthood, and everyone else, from using federal funds for abortions. Convenience also seemed to require him to omit that the bill will cause (mainly poor) women to have fewer opportunities to get medical exams, pregnancy tests, pregnancy care, testing for sexually transmitted infections and birth control.
Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill†will “unleash our natural resources like never before,†Moore wrote. Coal is coming back, he believes. Sure, just like it has not been coming back for 40 years. Moore ought to know that, regardless of who is president or who controls Congress, a thin gruel of deregulation and political talk can’t put more coal in the ground because, as ineluctably as the daily ebb and flow of the tides, fossil fuels are on the wane.
Meanwhile, Moore is ecstatic at the bill’s elimination of tax credits for renewables. He preposterously claims that Trump’s bill will “unleash American energy.†Does he not know that far more jobs are being created in renewable energy than in coal?
Moore hyped the bill’s elimination of the taxes on tips, saying it is a boon to workers and families. But he omitted mention that many of those workers are Medicaid recipients, and that the bill robs Medicaid of $800 billion. Thus, while he gloats about putting a smidgen more in the pockets of millions of tip-earners, he remained silent about how the Medicaid cuts will set the same folks back by significantly more dollars when they visit a doctor.
Additionally, Moore offers no comfort to the communities whose hospitals will be shuttered once the Medicaid dollars have been sucked out of the citizens. Their misery will be worth it, Moore believes, because able-bodied Medicaid recipients will now be required to work. But Medicaid fraudsters are miniscule in number (only 1 in every 23,000 recipients was convicted of fraud in 2023). Thus, Rep. Moore believes it is wise to plow under an acre of lawn because it contained a single dandelion. Meanwhile, the cash saved by cuts to Medicaid (and SNAP for poor children) will be put to use giving tax cuts to the well-off, like Moore himself.
Joseph Wyatt is a Gazette-Mail contributing columnist and emeritus professor at Marshall University. Reach him at Wyatt844@hoitmail.com.
